Intellectuals

Rating:
Summary: Thank you, Paul Johnson.
Review: Paul Johnson is easily the most thoughtful mainstream/popular historian of the past several decades. One may gain some factual knowledge from the herds of leftist historians, but absolutely no insight. Johnson's books offer not only richly detailed, beautifully written history, but also honest and objective insight. Although obviously a moderate conservative, Johnson's writings are fair and not agenda-driven in the least. Amusingly, Johnson is routinely attacked by intolerant individuals who loath diversity of opinion.
'Intellectuals' takes a daring look at a number of thinkers whose ideas have unfortunately shaped much of today's dominant political, religious and philosophical worldviews. Johnson's iconclastic approach was a risk worth taking, as this book continues to gain new readers. We truly owe Johnson a debt of gratitude. Without works like this, we would have to rely upon what, lamentably, passes for higher education today. I would also like to urge readers who appreciated 'Intellectuals' to read 'Degenerate Moderns' by E. Michael Jones as an essential follow-up to Johnson's book. Jones, an accomplished scholar, takes a similar look at several other influential secular intellectuals. Jones does a more thorough job of connecting the dots and is more forceful and explicit in his conclusions. After reading these two invaluable books, one feels grateful for the opportunity to finally hear the truth, and disgusted at the same time. The ultimate realization is that the paramount influences behind modern academic standards, moral beliefs, and in some cases, scientific understanding, amount to nothing more than a few authors' neuroses vomited onto the page.

Rating:
Summary: A biased but interesting view of intellectuals
Review: Paul Johnson reviews the life and influence of many important intellectuals since the eighteenth century, from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Noam Chomsky, including Percy Shelley, Leo Tolstoy, Karl Marx, Bertrand Russell, Bertolt Brecht, Jean-Paul Sartre, and James Baldwin. In all cases, Johnson documents the strking contrast between these intellectualsfprinciples and actual deeds. They all have, at some point, severely failed to privately follow the principles they were publicly promoting, including behavior towards women, honesty, money, violence. Another common point among them is precisely their relation to violence. Often condemning it aggressively, sometimes justifying it by invoking higher causes, it seems that all these intellectuals are fascinated by or subject to it.

One can argue that Johnson has chosen a particular subset of intellectuals, and focused on some particular aspects or periods of their life. Johnson chooses Rousseau over Voltaire, Tolstoy over Dostoyevsky, etc. His ranking of intellectuals in term of their influence is subjective (although this point is not raised at all in the book), and one could probably find more pragmatic or "respectable" (to the conservative eye) intellectuals who carried as high an influence as the ones studied in the book. On the other hand, strong influence often takes the form of overwhelming breakthroughs and rebellions. In this sense, Johnson's result is almost tautological, as a certain degree of originality and strong character is to be expected from those whose writings have been the most influential. Regarding the second point, Johnson does a convincing job at showing, through quotations and stories, that there was something really wrong with the intellectuals he has chosen. This evidence constitutes the richness of the book, and leaves the reader with troubling truths about the behavior of these well-known intellectuals. For example, it is striking to contrast Russell's accusation (among many others) that "all Russians crawl on their bellies to betray their friends," with the cool-headed logic that he otherwise developed.

Logically, though, the fact that a man's life does not follow his principles does not necessarily invalidate the principles themselves. This reminds me of the Chinese proverb gwisdom is to know what to do next, virtue is to do it.h In that sense, Johnson's intellectuals could be wise but not virtuous, which does not necessarily undermines their theories. That some intellectualsftheories had a disastrous influence on History, such as Marx, or Nietzsche, is hardly controversial. Then again, why did Johnson choose Karl Marx over Adam Smith? Why did he choose Jean-Paul Sartre over Raymond Aron? It might be fairer to intellectuals to warn the public about their potentially dangerous magnetism, rather than stigmatize them as a class. With this important reserve, Johnson's warning against the "mieux vaut avoir tort avec Sartre, que raison avec Aron" temptation is an interesting and well illustrated one.

Rating:
Summary: No Thinker Should Fail to Read This Book
Review: Paul Johnson's thesis was not, as suggested in the 'Editorial', that all great thinkers have had feet of clay, but that their ideologies do not stand up to the tests of time, common sense and personal practice. As the ideology of Marx claimed more than 22 million lives through the pogroms, gulags and purges of Stalin, how could anyone argue that a close and critical examination of the life of Marx, and its interplay with the communist philosophy he promulgated, is not important? I don't understand also where one reviewer draws the conclusion that Johnson is a 'Christian.' His religion is never mentioned, and is irrelevant in any event, as he uses empirical methods of analysis. The portraits are not only entertaining, THEY'RE A GREAT SHORTCUT TO ACQUIRING A WORKING KNOWLEDGE OF THE CORPUS OF MODERN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY. This is why the book is so great -- I was born too late to be intimately familiar with the works and philosophies of many of these people, yet I don't have time to read the massed collections of their works. From the remove of history, most of what Johnson concludes about them is true, but it is not a facile conclusion. I agree with his thesis that people are ultimately more important than ideas. If one agrees with this, one has to conceed the efficacy of examining the person behind the idea. And these 'intellectuals' are hillarious, pitiful and crazy. A great book for any political bent.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting but biased thesis on Intellectuals
Review: Paul Johnson, author of 'Modern Times' and other works, changes tack and engages in a systematic critique of 'Intellectuals', who Johnson argues are a rather pathetic bunch of figures that have attempted to fill the shoes of the clergy in the Secular Age in which we now live.

'Intellectuals' contains a portrait of some twenty or so figures who are representative of this class, ranging from Rosseau to Sarte and Brecht. Johnson examines the life of each intellectual in great detail, exposing and bitterly criticising their often nasty habits and faults, whether it be Rosseau's odd sexuality, Marx's inability to manage money, Ibsen's cold manipulation of people around him, Bertrand Russell's inability to make a cup of tea, or Sartre's undistinguished record in the French resistance movement.

At the end of this survey, Johnson comes to the conclusion that the authority of the intellectual, especially in regards to morality and politics, must come into question, and indeed, Johnson wonders if they have any authority to comment at all on matters of politics or social issues. Johnson extends this criticism to more recent leftist figures (including Chomsky) in more recent editions of the book.

As is typical of Johnson, the book is brilliantly written and tightly argued. But Johnson still fails to convince the reader about the logic and validity of his argument. Indeed, the whole book smacks of the 'ad hominem' fallacy-attacking the person rather than debating the relative merits of their views. Being an adulterous and insensitive cur didn't stop Russell from being one of the finest logicians of the 20th century, and Schrodinger's penchant for young women didn't stop him from being a pioneer in quantum mechanics.

Another critical weakness is the figures Johnson omits. Other key intellectuals of the 19th and 20th century-Einstein, Freud, Hiedigger, Nietzsche, Foucalt, Proust, Joyce, etc-had severe faults in their personal lives or character defects, and yet are not mentioned. Valid arguments against the moral authority of these figures (especially Freud, Hiedigger and Nietzsche) could have been made, and yet were not. The omissions (as well as the fact virtually all figures were Marxists or associated with 'left' thinking) seems to raise questions about whether Johnson is really pointing out a valid point, or is seeing these figures through the prism of his own ideaological conservatism.

In closing, it can be said Johnson puts forward an interesting, but unconvincing, thesis.

Rating:
Summary: Johnson's books are a waste of good trees
Review: The born-again Catholic Johnson, once a poor editor of the poor journal New Statesman, has written a book which reveals only his own ugly mean-mindedness. Someone remarked to Napoleon, "No man is a hero to his valet." Napoleon replied, "That is not because the hero is no hero, but because the valet is only a valet." Johnson cannot see any virtues, because he has none himself. He is of a piece with the other bullyboys of the right, Bill O'Reilly (the great defender of family values,now on sexual harassment charges), Rush Limbaugh, Kelvin McKenzie, Alistair Campbell, Bernard Ingham, Christopher Hitchens. All pose as iconoclastic, brave and outspoken; but all cravenly repeat the lies of power. All fawn on the rich swine who own the media pulpits from which they bully those who never have a chance to reply.


Rating:
Summary: Rousseau was a jerk? Imagine that.
Review: The first thing worth noting is the silly review by Amazon's Gregory McNamee. His chosen examples of "foibles" noted by Johnson are Ibsens vanity and Sartre's incontinence. McNamee must not have read the book. Or maybe he skimmed the section describing how Rousseau fathered five children by his maid/mistress (whom he used and abused), wanted nothing to do with them so he had the kids sent to their deaths in an orphanage for waifs. Sure Marx avoided contact with the working class but he also lied, misrepresented, twisted and tortured the facts in order to make his case for Communism. And so it goes with many of the founders of the enlightment. This book is must reading for anyone truly interested in how these intellectual pioneers lived their lives and failed to practice what they preached.